this city was built on bones
by xshedreamsinredx
Summary: Teddy/Victoire/JamesII. And some days she is a little more lost than she cares to admit.


**this city was built on bones**

"_Love, for you, is larger than the usual romantic love.  
It's like a religion. It's terrifying.  
No one will ever want to sleep with you."  
_- Richard Siken

-O-

And some days she is a little more lost than she cares to admit.

-O-

It's in the middle of November that Teddy snaps her heart in two, shatters every notion she has ever had of a life with him. Her hands feel numb in his as he sits in front of her and _begs _her to understand in a manner that is two-third suffocating and one-third something she can't define. His soft words ring harsh in her head, semantics and euphuisms dissolve the intensity of his phrases and she feels this all too familiar need to escape the gravity of his gloomy, grey eyes.

"It was a mistake." He says.

The ring on her finger weighs her down.

She thinks she'll crumble under it one day and it will be an affirmation of something she'll be too drained to think about.

"I never meant to hurt you."

She looks at him only to look away, draws her hands back quietly.

"I'm sorry, Victoire. God, I'm so sorry."

She gets up abruptly-

"Teddy," her voice sounds different to her own ears, its calm and collected and not erupting into the hysterical shriek she had been planning to deliver. "Just shut up."

-and leaves.

-O-

She goes to James because that is what she always does. It's the default setting she couldn't customise to her advantage.

Half a second of a hesitant knock later, he opens the door looking as tired as she feels. His hair sticks up in enough directions to make her question if he has got a girl inside and he blinks at her several times before his brain finally catches up. His eyes flash at the sight of her and he lets out a longsuffering breath before stepping aside to let her in.

"What?"

She fidgets under his stare, imagining the crazed mess she must look with her swollen eyes and melted mascara. She just doesn't blend in with the soft spaces and sharp turns of his apartment.

"He slept with your sister." She means to hurl that at him as an accusation, for shock value, rephrased into words bound to hurt him, but it comes out so meek and hollow that it almost sounds trivial. Victoire has always been one to make herself sound trivial.

James doesn't even bat an eyelash in response. His eyebrows doesn't hitch in surprise, his mouth doesn't clench in anger, no bouts of denial tumble from his mouth and just like that she knows that he knows; that he_ knew_.

He steps towards her in a gesture that obviously means to unsettle her. The fact that she knows it means to unsettle her doesn't really deter her from feeling unsettled.

"And you're here for what? Your very own quick Potter fix?"

Her fist connects with the side of his jaw before she can even process the sequence in her head and she feels the regret mapping out under her veins the moment he grabs her hand a little roughly than he probably intended. "You're an arse."

The tension in his posture subsides and he lets go of her readily.

He has always been the one to let her go readily. "I think we'd already established that. Aren't we supposed to have progressed past the initial psychoanalysing phase?

She laughs because it's funny and he is fucking funny. It's always so fucking hilarious when she is at the receiving ends of all his wise cracks. She laughs like a woman possessed, tears pool at the corner of her eyes due to the strain and it takes her sometime but it registers that he is no longer being funny but looking at her in a way that makes her wonder if he is concerned or _something_.

She laughs and laughs and laughs until she can't and _then_-

She starts to cry.

-O-

He sighs, like this whole episode is causing him some excruciating mental strain and she thinks something ridiculous like_ I'm sorry I keep on choosing him over you_.

He opens his mouth and shuts it again, wordless. It only makes her cry harder.

They have been here before.

He pulls her in the direction of his room and she doesn't try to stop him.

-O-

She is in his room, in his arms, in his bed and she think it's only fair considering he is always there in her head.

-O-

She wakes up to the sound of angry, chilling voices. Her head spins in protest as she tries to get up from bed and approach the source of the chaos. It slows her down.

She trembles close to the door with light; uncertain footsteps and stops right in her tracks the minute she is able to place his voice. "She needs to come back, James," Teddy speaks through gritted teeth, "it's not up for argument. I-"

"And if she doesn't want to go back?" James interrupts unceremoniously.

Teddy grows quite for a moment only to let out a low chuckle. "Hasn't the past taught you any better?"

She opens the door, inviting both of their attention towards the doorway. She keeps her eyes trained obstinately on James and avoids looking at the man who made promises to her he couldn't keep. James glares at her stonily, nods in the direction of his room. _Go back._

But her body has other plans; it doesn't move a fraction from its space. She feels Teddy's stare boring holes in her bones; it makes her feel close to naked in the shirt that is two size bigger to belong to her, it also makes her aware of what implications it holds and what must be going through Teddy's head.

"Victoire, you proved your point," Teddy begins in what she assumes is meant to be a tired, detached voice, "you got back at me, you showed me that you could do it. Now, it's time for both of us to head home. The invitations have been sent out, our families are involved. Do the right thing for once, think about the others and come back with me."

She thinks she wants to scream at him because she _is_ always doing the right thing. Maybe she wants to do something unplanned, something selfish, something that doesn't involve her willing herself to love a man who is supposed to right and charming and _not related to her in any way_. A man who is supposed to be her friend and not her cousin. A man she'd known her entire life. A man who had taken away so much time from her. A man she could have grown old with only if he'd let her.

She thinks she wants to yell, rage, cry, and do all the things she couldn't the last time she saw him but all she does is stand in the doorway and refuse to look at him for the fear that she'll see some blazing accusation in his grey eyes for running to James, for being found in his apartment, in his room, in his clothes.

Victoire has always been too much of a coward to be anything else. It's hardly a wonder she never made it into Gryffindor back at Hogwarts.

"Vicky, go back inside." James voice is composed of iron and disdain. "I'll handle it. You don't have to stay here for this."

"Yes, _Vicky. _Let him handle it. He has been handling this since what… last night?" His eyes sweep up and down her frame in a manner that makes her skin crawl. And he absolutely has no right to go _there_. Not after what he has done.

"Get the fuck out of my house this very instant." James announces, ending bouts of self-misery on her part.

"I'm going," Teddy raises both his hands in the air as a gesture of surrender, "but think about what I said _Vicky_. You fucking your cousin won't make for a very friendly Christmas dinner conversation and we both happen to know how much Weasleys are fond of them. Right?"

Two things happen at once: Her legs give out from under her making her collapse to the floor and James looks away from her only to turn around and punch Teddy right in the face. "If you're done, I suggest you get the fuck out."

Teddy looks like he might want to the last word in, start a brawl; he sizes up James, flicks his glance to her on the floor, sighs, thinks better of it and vanishes away in a puff of smoke.

-O-

The days grow longer and the nights grow shorter at James residence. She counts her days away reading muggle literature and thinks less and less about the impending wedding and more and more about what Teddy said.

It's after a week of her waiting for James to come home and a stack of letters she doesn't respond to piling up that she realises her borrowed time has come to an end. She makes peace with the finality of her decision, reconciles her emotions and catalogues every memory away in the back of her head.

She leaves him with nothing more than words that can be scattered to the wind on a crumpled piece of paper. _I'm sorry._

It's nowhere close to enough. She just hopes it will be enough to warrant his forgiveness someday.

-O-

He visits her in the dressing room.

"You look like shit." From where she is seated she can see his reflection in the mirror. He approaches her from behind and stops just a few steps away back to maintain the necessary distance. "Just terrible as per a general rule."

Her lips cross into something that must resemble a smile in some medieval cultures. "You're lying."

And he is because there was this slight catch of breath at the end of his sentence that she could hear, a slight inflection that had seeped into his voice without any warning.

"Yes, I am," he admits, wryly, "always have been somewhat of a sore loser."

She feels water forming in her eyes. Some dust particle probably. "So… Is this the part where you tell me that I can still run away with you if I want to?"

"Close but not really, no." He takes another step back. "This is the part where I tell you that I'm letting you go. Forever."

"James…"

"Don't, Vicky," he shakes his head vehemently, "I know. I'm not an idiot. I'm sorry that you're my cousin and you're marrying my almost brother and I want to kiss you but I'm not sorry that I love you. I didn't choose it, it just happened and if I could take it back I would. Maybe if you'd been a different girl and I'd been a different man, it would have ended up in a happy ending but we are not and we can't be. You will always be my cousin and we'll always be somewhat of a tragedy. But that's okay. I'm okay with it. I'm not going to chase after you or stop you from marrying him. I will not disturb the ceremony in any way possible."

She feels her sanity slip from the spaces between her fingers, piece by loving piece, and it just makes her insides cramp with this terrible sort of tenderness. All she wants to do is reach out and hold him, to know that he is tangible and he is there but she doesn't, she _can't_ because he is there this moment but he won't be in the following one and isn't that the most repetitive theme in history of the world? Falling in love with the wrong person over and over again.

"James, just promise me you'll try to be happy." Water slips down her cheeks and she sees him sigh. She thinks he'll cross the distance, steal a kiss and go but James remains rooted in his place; his eyes meet hers in the mirror and he gives her a quick nod and a dry smile.

"You too, Vicky."

And then, he is gone and she is left alone to fix the mess that her tears have turned her face into.

-O-

It starts snowing the minute she walks down the aisle. She thinks it would have been funny if it wasn't already so fitting.

She gets married to Teddy and pointedly pretends that she doesn't notice the empty spot on the pew reserved in his name. It's not even that big of a deal, its okay. She was a non-believer when it came to happy endings anyway.

-O-

It's different once she gets married.

The first few months that follow resemble something akin to happiness. Teddy tries really hard to keep her happy and she in turns tries too. She plays the role of a dutiful housewife and juggles between a job at Ministry of Magic and house chores. She sits and eats dinner with him, talks to him when he returns from his field job and skilfully skirts around the topic of Lily who is away at Hogwarts. He shows her off at his official parties and she smiles prettily for the spectators to observe the _happy couple._ The last she hears of James is from Aunt Ginny, he's taken to travelling. It's a non-sequitur in her entire thought process but no one has to know.

-O-

It seems almost enough in the beginning but after a while, Teddy gets tired of trying and not succeeding and she avoids the shift in his behaviour in order to compensate for the emptiness inside her.

Teddy starts returning home late from work with alarming frequency, he starts talking less and shutting her up more with a barrage of gifts, the whispers in the neighbourhood begin ardently and by the end of it she somehow ends up at the receiving end of pitiful stares. Her parents chain of letters increases and their questions even more so. _Are you happy? Is he treating you well? Why don't you visit us anymore?_

The questions, the whispers, the stares build an inadvertent pressure above her, around her and she can feel herself getting crushed under the weight. She lets it build up and swallow her whole until there is nothing left to be called her own.

-O-

Louis visits her in her office. He has always been her favourite sibling. Growing up, she always was more close to him than Dominique.

"You look tired." He comments the minute he takes in her appearance, sending her to fuss over her hair self-consciously.

"Work can be a stretch at times." She replies in a tone that is supposed to be playful but it comes out sounding so false that it makes her wince.

Louis looks at her for two more seconds than necessary and then reaches out to brush the back of her hand from across the table comfortingly. "Don't do this to yourself, Victoire. You're in a hell of your own making."

"Well, too late to get out of that, brother dear." She ruffles his hair in an affectionate gesture, it used to annoy him earlier but now he only scoffs in response and refuses to fall for the half-assed attempt at distraction. He stares at her in a manner that makes her certain she is not fooling him.

"Victoire," he fixes her with a stern look, "it's not too late, you can end it any day you want, come live with me."

She laughs good-naturedly. "So, you're the boss now? You are running the show? When did you grow up so much, Louis?"

"Don't change the topic," he declares. "One of these days, it will kill you. It is already taking its toll."

"I can't do that to Mom and Dad," she sobers up immediately, "… And think about Uncle Harry and Aunt Ginny. Teddy was family much before me. It will make things queasy."

"Queasy?" He echoes, looking rather enraged. "You'll continue to do this to yourself so it doesn't make things queasy at the family gatherings. Are you completely and utterly bonkers?"

"That is one way of putting it." She mumbles under her breath only to find him opening his mouth again to give her a piece of his mind. "Louis, please. The day I feel like I can't do it anymore is the day it will come to an end but there are many people involved. So, drop it, for now."

Louis looks like he wants to argue but stops himself in good time. He sighs in frustration and then turns to her.

"So… Did you know Rosie is dating Scorpius?"

It was bound to happen. She dissolves into a fit of hysterical giggles. "What did Uncle Ron say?"

"That's the best part," Louis grins evilly, "he doesn't know about it yet."

"No." She gapes, eyes widening slightly as Louis cocks his head in challenge. "May Merlin help his poor soul."

With that, both of them go back to laughing again. She talks herself out of energy, asking after all the family members and their well being, conveniently leaving out one.

And when it's time for him to leave, Louis kisses her forehead; whispers answer, to the question she wasn't willing to ask, in her ear. "He is living in muggle London."

"Who?" She really shouldn't have asked because she knows. Louis for his part remains silent and she is sort of thankful to him for sparing her that, she kicks at the dirt as she stands at the side of the curb to see him off, looking up only to find him watching her with an odd sort of fondness. She sighs. "Am I really that obvious?"

He seems to be making an effort not to smile but it is beyond his control, really. "A little," he relents, "but only to me."

"Do you hate me?" She thinks she shouldn't feel this vulnerable out of nowhere.

Before, she can continue her line of questioning; Louis has her engulfed in his arms. "You're my sister. I could never hate you. Not even that one time you stole my chocolate frogs."

"Hey, I didn't steal them," she cries, clearly offended but snuggles closer to him nonetheless, his jacket muffles her voice but that doesn't make him release her. "Thank you, Louis."

He smiles.

-O-

Months turn into a year and then the year passes away to give way to new.

They are seated at the breakfast table; Teddy is happily occupied with the daily chronicle whereas she is pushing food around in her plate half-heartedly.

"I think… I want a divorce," she says it quietly.

Teddy doesn't even bother to look up from the newspaper, clearly believing that the best way to approach this would be to ignore it.

"I want a divorce." She says again, a bit more loudly, a bit more firmly.

Teddy folds the newspaper and tosses it on the table, pausing to look up at her with grey, gloomy eyes. "We are way past this, Victoire. Let's not do this."

"I-We- we're not happy… together."

Teddy slams his fist on the table top with more force than required. It sends the wooden table creaking at the joints.

"Really?" She recoils in her seat due to the unexpected venom present in his voice. "When did you figure that out? Between me sleeping around with women that were not you or you realizing that you are in love with your cousin?"

"Don't make it about him. I just can't do this with you. Not anymore."

His eyes flash. "The truth is that you never really wanted to in the first place. You never really made an effort."

"Teddy," she exhales shakily, "I used to be so in love with you. Even when I loved James, I never stopped loving you. I was ready to spend my whole life with you but you took it all and threw it away the minute you slept with Lily, my cousin, Teddy. She was close enough to be my sister."

"Don't. You jumped into bed with her brother the minute you came to know about it, you just needed a valid enough reason." His words cut into her like shards; she can almost feel the slight of his fingertips ghosting over her windpipe. He always did have a knack for cruelty.

"No, I didn't," she confesses in a voice so small that she is sure he will miss it. "I never did. Not even when you-"

She lets herself trail off because she can't even bring herself to reiterate the truth. Always such a coward.

"Victoire-"

"I'm leaving Teddy." Her lips set into a grim line; she thinks it will suit her better than that fake, saccharine smile she has been projecting for the last two years.

"And where will you go?" He challenges her, quirking an eyebrow to accentuate the idiocy of her own statement.

"Somewhere. Anywhere. Maybe London." The words tumble out of her mouth in a maddening frenzy before she can stop them and Teddy sneers at the mere suggestion. "To James?"

She nods calmly. "Yes. To James."

"Think about your family, Victoire, think about your aunt and uncle. Do you really want to put them through this?" He asks her in a tone that means to remind her of reason and rationale but it only makes her hysterical.

"Teddy, please." She sounds desperate to her own ears. "Don't do this. You know I can't keep going on like this, I'll go insane."

But Teddy doesn't pay any heed to what she says, he keeps firing away questions she holds no appropriate response to, making her resolve crumble with every word that leaves his mouth.

"I don't care about any of that." She screams frenetically to stop him from talking.

He stops. Smiles morbidly at her. "Spoken like a true Slytherin."

She shakes her head vehemently. "No. You can't manipulate me into staying. Not this time."

"You don't need me for that, Victoire, you will think up of enough reasons to stay on your own accord like you always do."

It's the saddest thing she has ever heard, the saddest man she has ever seen. She thinks of the time she has lost, thinks of the man she has loved for half of her life, thinks of the other man she still loves, thinks of Louis spewing out advice like she was the younger sibling and he was the older one. She gets up from the table. Takes one step back and then another and another.

-O-

She knocks at his door, half-hoping he opens the door after she turns into a Popsicle and half-hoping the floor swallows her before he does. Unfortunately, for her neither scenario can take the shape of reality and he swings the door open before she can even device what she is going to say. "Vicky?"

"James," he looks mildly unnerved at seeing her and she doesn't really blame him, the last time he'd seen her was two years ago in a wedding gown. He had pretty much told her she looked terrible and walked out. It's highly probable that he has moved on; found himself a pretty, muggle girl who isn't_ related_ to him. "I- I didn't have anywhere else to go."

Louis's face swims into her mind and she sighs inwardly. On top of being incredibly messed up, she is also a compulsive liar.

He looks above her shoulder. "Should I except Lupin to come knocking around here?"

"Not unless you're speaking in the context of your teeth." She replies without much humour, stepping into his apartment. "But I'm not quite sure about that too. We don't see eye to eye."

He shuts the door behind her. "Trouble in paradise?"

His callousness grates on her nerves; it makes her want to hit him really, really hard. "How have you been?"

She avoids his question, knows that her presence is more than answer enough. James looks like he wants to prod and poke the wound while it is still fresh but lets his handful of jabs slide. "Peachy."

"That's good." The silence is uncomfortable and jarring, she can feel the strangeness of it soak her to the bone and trickle down to her veins.

"So, what did he do this time?" He supports himself against the closed entrance door. "I mean, don't mind but your visits tend to wreak havoc on my psyche, and contrary to what you may think, I do have a life and this whole cycle tends to wear me down."

For a minute she thinks she should have gone to Louis, she shouldn't have barged into his personal space without any warning; she should have at least tried to find out what he was up to before coming here. James looks at her expectantly. "I left him."

His eyebrows rise in surprise but he recovers swiftly from his momentary disbelief. "So, you thought that you'd come here and I'll be more than willing and overjoyed with relief to have you back?"

She blinks at him rapidly, trying to grasp the meaning of words. "You didn't even entertain the notion that I might have found someone?"

She did, just not at the right time or place. "God, you are so selfish," he sounds half aggravated and half something she can't find a word in her vocabulary for. "You can't toy with people like that. You can do things like that. How many times will you force me to say goodbye before you finally start to mean it?"

He paces up to her and stops just a few inches away to allow her the illusion of a personal space. She side steps him and tries frantically to look at anything but him, bolting straight for the door. She doesn't remember ever feeling this stupid. "You're right, it was wrong of me to come. I'm sorry. I'll just leave."

She is just within arm reach of the gate when he stops her, jerking around with more strength than necessary only to back her up against the door. Leaning in, he props his arms on either side to allow her no available escape route.

"No. _No_, you won't." He informs her. "You can't keep walking in and out of my life at your flights of fancy. You can't make me hear your decision without even giving me a chance to respond."

She looks up at him from underneath her lashes, frustration ebbing away at her pulse. "Then what do I do? You're not happy with me coming, you're not happy with me going. You can't stop yourself from insulting me but you also can't keep yourself away from me. You confuse me."

"You're always leaving me, one way or the other." He tells her. His fingers dance along the underside of her chin and he tips her head back so as to have her face him properly. "What about staying? Don't you ever think about staying?"

"But think about-" He hushes her before she can get another word out.

"No, don't think about anyone else for a moment," his dark stare melts away her coherent thoughts and she thinks she can get used to this. She can get used to this very easily. She can grow to associate his arms with her shelter and his eyes with home coming for the remaining fraction of her life and it won't bother her in the least. "Would you like to stay, Vicky?"

She swallows her pride, puts her thoughts to rest, feels her fingers cramp with the effort it takes to be so close to him and not touch him, the answer is abrupt and unplanned and probably accounts for more meaning than anything else in her life. "Yes."

His mouth is no longer a beat away from hers, he lets his lips ghost over hers for nothing more than half a minute but it feels more like the better half of eternity. Breathing harshly, he leans in again, hovering close to her ear. "Then stay."

So, she does.

-O-

She knows that it probably won't end in a happy ending for them but at least it starts with a once upon a time:

Once upon a time, Victoire decide to stay-

She hasn't regretted the decision ever since.

-O-

A/N: Please refrain from leaving reviews telling me how disgusting incest is. I mean you must have had an idea what you were setting yourself up for when you clicked the link. Either ways, hope you enjoyed. Provide me with feedback; spending two more seconds of your precious on this page won't kill you. I promise.


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